As you leave this part of the Superstition Mountains, you are once again confronted by the features of civilization that surround the Wilderness Area.  In the distance here, above the valley of Pinto Creek itself, are a series of long, straight mine dumps.
   The Globe / Miami area is home to some major copper deposits, and giant mines exist just outside the range of this photograph.  They are "open-pit" mines, meaning that massive amounts of rock must be removed from above the mineralized zones -- rock that is not worth processing, so it is piled up in the giant layers you see here.  These will eventually be re-vegetated (hopefully), although they will still show the way mining has modified the shape of the landscape.
 
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   See the GeoHistory page if you want to know more about why the landscape looks the way it does, or return to the map of "The Superstition Mountains" for more view locations.
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